By Vicki Rothrock
© VARIETY
HONG KONG – i-Cable’s Cable TV, long the dominant paybox here, is looking to its laurels as tyro rival NOW Broadband TV, owned by PCCW, is catching up at a rapid clip.
Three-year-old NOW has 700,000 subscribers, just behind the 770,000 that Cable TV reported in June, in part because it has successfully wooed movie channels and high-profile sports from Cable TV.
However, that policy has not come cheap and NOW is looking for ways to recover that money.
Vivek Couto, executive director of Media Partners Asia, estimates that NOW paid $201 million for exclusive rights to three seasons of English Premier League soccer compared with the $90 million I-Cable previously paid.
NOW also landed exclusive rights to air the UEFA European soccer tourney in 2008.
The local press report that NOW is mulling over a rate increase of 16% on its basic $43.30 a month package, but NOW hasn’t yet made a decision.
Increases of 5% to 10% are more typical, Couto says. “It will be interesting to see how they do it.”
With fewer high-profile channels, Cable TV is looking into other options.
“We are doing a lot of things,” says a Cable TV spokesman. “We are planning things on the programming side, the content side and the marketing side.”
One possibility is a free channel that local press describes as a Chinese entertainment channel. The paybox, however, says details haven’t yet been confirmed.
The paybox denies plans to cut its monthly $51 rate for its standard package.
The paybox has said it would diversify its programming with the money saved when it lost the two soccer tournament bids.
It will be interesting to see how much the loss of soccer and other channels is hitting Cable TV’s subs numbers.
Couto adds that I-Cable’s share price took a beating last year and suggests that Wharf, which owns 60% of I-Cable, might privatize the business and delist it.
NOW, which also is losing money, offers more than 120 channels, including HBO, Cinemax, Star Movies, ESPN and Star Sports.